The Wrong Heroes
by Rainstorm Amaya Arianrhod
Summary: Roald and Liam spend some time in the catacombs, and learn a lot about heroes, place-memory, Tortallan history and each other. Birthday fic for Kat.


**A/N:** Birthday fic for Kat: she asked for Roger or Gary or the Conte kids, so naturally it turned into all three at once. :p **_Please read and review!_**

* * *

"Liam. _Liam_," Roald called. "Where are you?"

He wondered why he'd thought to come down to the catacombs. They were lonely, lit by torches and inhabited only by a couple of keepers, silent priests of the Black God who petrified Roald and whose job was to keep intruders like Roald out of there- but they either didn't know about this entrance, or they didn't think it large enough to be worth policing.

Perhaps they were too scared of what lay so close by to go anywhere near it.

As far as Roald was concerned, this place held few fears. True, he shouldn't choose to come down here on a solstice, or on the dates of Duke Roger of Conté's deaths, and he stayed well away from the tomb with his name on it (_Roald the Peacemaker: king, father, son, husband: may the Black God grant him a place in the sun_) but otherwise it was... peaceful. He had often come down here as a page, when he had a snatched moment of free time, and meditated, just for the quiet and stillness of it, a stillness Roald desperately wished he could carry around with him, as a shield against spite and stupidity and everything that made the world a nasty place. He had told only three people: Faleron, whose silence he could count on, Lianne, who seemed to need peace the way he did, and Liam- Liam, who had followed him down there one day, slipping from shadow to shadow, silent and catlike.

That had been in the days before he'd met Shinko, when the marriage was being arranged and he had felt more than once as if a nervous breakdown was imminent. He'd needed the peace of this place, but Liam had found him, and threatened to tell Father unless Roald explained.

So Roald had explained, about the dream, vivid and clear, of some passageways and a stairwell, carrying him down into the depths of the palace; of how he'd remembered it the next day, and out of curiosity had followed his memory until he reached the catacombs, the defunct Gate of Idramm, the sword, and the small, dusty plaque. At first, he'd been frightened, but then he'd realised it was safe.

That had been a long time ago, and now Roald was twenty years old and happily married. Liam? Liam was fourteen, and as moody as a boy of that age could possibly be. Roald wasn't sure what the latest row had been over, but it had been between Liam and Lianne, and the indistinct yelling had attracted their father's wrath, whereupon the argument had become one between Jonathan and Liam, and it had ended with Liam sweeping out in a storm of too-long brown hair and blazing hazel eyes. He had been gone three hours when Jonathan had gone looking for him, probably to extract an apology; but Liam was nowhere to be found. Enquiries at the stables elicited the information that Liam hadn't taken a horse and gone out into the Royal Forest as Lianne had been known to do when furious; he was not slouching around the pages' wing or pouring his woes into one of his friends' ears.

So Jonathan had raised the alarm, and now every single member of the extended Conté family, up to and including Thom of Pirate's Swoop, was combing the palace for the errant teenager. Roald had remembered the catacombs only while methodically searching the menagerie, and had immediately given his fellow searcher the slip in order to investigate.

"Liam!" he called, but there was no answer, his voice echoing off the catacombs' walls and ceiling. Roald willed more light into the magelight hovering gently above his fingers, and moved forward, out into the open space where the Gate of Idramm lay.

Yes, there he was. A hunched, dark figure with his back to Roald, staring at the Gate of Idramm and the sword in the centre of it.

"What do you want?" Liam said, without turning around.

Roald didn't answer, but came and sat beside him. They were both silent.

"Why did you come down here?" Roald said eventually.

Liam groaned. "For a little peace and quiet. Why does everyone _hate_ me all of a sudden?"

"Believe me," Roald said softly, "they don't. Or they wouldn't be searching the palace for you this very moment."

Liam turned his head towards his brother so quickly he wrenched a muscle, burning heat erupting in the side of his neck. The bluish light of Roald's little flame of Gift gave his face an eerie, shadowed cast.

"Oh, yes," Roald answered before Liam could ask. "I was looking in the menagerie when I remembered about this place."

"Oh." Liam looked at his feet, and then at the Gate of Idramm.

There was another long pause, and this time, Liam broke it.

"Did you ever want to be a hero?"

Roald stretched out his legs. "Once. When I was very small."

A bitter smile curved Liam's mouth. "Oh, thanks, big brother, that's so flattering- well I still do." He continued, flailing one hand expressively: "I thought, you know, heroes. None of this happens to them. Arguments, that sort of thing. They're always right."

"They're human. They can't always be right."

Liam continued as if he hadn't heard. "And they do different things. Life-changing things, they dare, they dream and they make their dreams reality, they do things on the spur of the moment _like this_-" Too quick for Roald to stop his, the boy leapt up and sprinted across the Gate of Idramm- two steps brought him to its centre and he grasped the sword's hilt.

"_Liam no_!" Roald screamed, as the Gate of Idramm suddenly lit up a nasty blood-red, flaring and dancing around the boy. _Like flames_, Roald thought dizzily, _they'll burn him to cinders _and he was never quite certain what he did next, but he knew that in a few moments he was dragging his unconscious brother out of the Gate and onto the solid, reassuring, dusty floor.

"Liam," the prince hissed, "Liam, wake up," and dealt his brother a couple of sharp slaps about the face. Liam's eyes blinked open, and fixed on the young man holding his head- but then they both heard voices and footsteps as the guardians came to investigate, and both heads lit still by the tiny bobbing blue light turned towards the direction they were coming from.

The brothers scrambled up and ran for the staircase, feet falling as light as they could let them, Roald leading the way up the winding stairs until they came to the corridor it opened out onto and they fled blindly through the corridors until they came to a door, and Roald crashed through it, Liam following swiftly afterwards and shutting the door behind them.

Roald, sprawled on the floor, and Liam, pressed against the wall, were perfectly still for a moment, listening. No-one came, and they relaxed. "What was that?" Liam whispered.

"Place-memory," Roald replied, a shiver going down his spine as he realised what day it was today. "Where great or violent things have been done, great works of magic or murders, the place itself sometimes remembers. Especially if it's an old place. And today's the anniversary of... you know."

"The Battle of the Hall of Crowns," Liam said dully. "Ye gods! Roald!"

They were not alone in the room.

A short woman, her copper hair shining dimly in the dark room and her clothes black as night, stood there also, but she wasn't looking at Liam and Roald, or even the man there with her; he was tall, and brown-haired, and wearing grey: she was looking at the floor.

"Ssh," Roald muttered, "it's another place-memory- see, they're shining -listen."

"He didn't have to die," the copper-haired woman said bitterly.

The brown-haired man stirred. "Alanna- you shouldn't-"

"Blame myself? Oh, I should, Gary. I killed him, after all."

"He would have killed you," the brown-haired man reminded her, and knelt; he had something in his hands, a small clay statue of a cat, and he laid it gently on the floor. He rested his hands on his knees, looking at the little cat. "None of us knew him any more. Not after he became Roger's squire. He slipped away from us, spent more time with Roger than he should have done... He admired him, he really did. Often said so. Not to you, of course, he knew you hated Roger." He paused, and got up. "He had the wrong heroes. He believed in the wrong person." Then he walked away, straight through the door, and faded.

Alanna the Lioness remained. As the brothers watched, she took out a small dagger and weighed it in her hand; then crouched down and scratched something into the floorboards. She took a long time over it, but finally she was satisfied with her work, and then she, too, was gone. There was a sound like a long sigh, and dust settling, and both brothers instinctively took a deep breath.

"Place-memory," Roald said, sounding more matter-of-fact than he felt, and got up and went to the place where he'd seen a younger Aunt Alanna carve something into the floorboards.

"Should you really?-" Liam began, but then cut himself off and said hesitantly: "That was Aunt Alanna and Uncle Gary. Only about twenty years younger."

"Make that twenty-five or so," Roald corrected. "but yes. Place-memory. Look."

Liam came over and looked. Roald was pointing to a carving in the wooden floorboards, clear and distinct after all these years, in slightly crude capitals.

"_Alex. He had the wrong heroes_," Liam read aloud, and shuddered. "Alexander of Tirragen."

Roald nodded silently. "Let's go," he said at last. "People will still be looking for you. Probably me now, too," he added as an afterthought.

"Mm," Liam agreed, but when Roald walked towards the exit, he didn't move.

"What?" Roald asked, looking back, holding the door open. "Aren't you coming?"

"Roald," Liam blurted, "I want to be like _you _when I grow up."

This was sufficiently odd that Roald paused, shut the door, and turned to his brother, frowning. "What do you mean?"

"You know what it says there," Liam said awkwardly. "He had the wrong heroes. Maybe... maybe I had the wrong heroes when I thought I should run into the Gate and take the sword in case it was my destiny. I nearly died."

"You didn't," Roald said. "You were caught in a place-memory. It would have released you."

"When?" Liam asked quietly.

Roald opened his mouth, and shut it again. "I don't know."

Liam nodded. "Exactly. But anyway- you pulled me out. You could have been burnt yourself but you didn't care."

"It's just what you do," Roald said. It was his turn to be awkward. "Isn't it?"

"It is if you're you," Liam agreed, and clapped his brother on the back. "That's why I want to be like you when I grow up. Brave, not stupid. Come on- let's go and face the rampaging search parties."

Roald laughed, and they strolled towards the door, and out down the corridor. "Oh, by the way, Liam-"

"What?"

"When you grabbed the sword- did it move?"

Sheepish smile. "Not a bit."

Their laughter echoed down the corridors and passageways of the Tortallan palace, and in the small room with the carving on the floor Alexander of Tirragen smiled.


End file.
